Sci-fi hodgepodge cautionary tale

Rating: 6/10 (25 July 2005)

THE ISLAND (2005) ** Ewan McGregor, Scarlett, Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi, Michael Clarke Duncan, Ethan Phillips, Shawnee Smith. Director Michael Bay's hodgepodge futuristic sci-fi action thriller is a patchwork of previous genre plottings including "THX-1138", "Blade Runner", "Logan's Run", "Gattaca", "Soylent Green", "The Sixth Day", "1984" and "Parts: The Clonus Horror" (!) mixed with "The Fugitive" in this relentless cautionary tale about cloning with McGregor and Johansson as clones who discover their world has been one giant lie and decide to escape from their evil creator, Bean (hamming it up big time) to warn the real world about the tampering of humanity. The screenplay by Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci attempt to breathe fresh air into a tired sub genre  the sci-fi morality fable and totalitarian warning of a bleak future with middling results but Bay knows how to keep the pulse quicken with his trademark breakneck editing and pacing particularly in the film's climactic hairy car chase sequence that makes it worth the price of admission to see the carnage on a huge screen. Otherwise it is a forgettable overbaked concoction of corporate misdeeds and misgivings.